A new partnership is aiming to help engineering companies access high-performance tooling while keeping tighter control over costs. MSC Industrial Supply Co, a leading supplier of metalworking, maintenance, repair and operations supplies, has signed a supply agreement with cutting tool specialist ZCC Cutting Tools.

The partnership will offer UK-based engineering firms high-quality solid carbide cutting tools from the ZCC Cutting Tools range. MSC believes there are great synergies between the two businesses and cites ZCC Cutting Tools’ reliability, expertise and affordability as key to the partnership, which will help its customers access technical grade products in increasingly challenging market conditions.

David Wilsher, director of UK operations at ZCC Cutting Tools, said: “The costs of raw materials, energy and shipping are all sharply rising. Businesses of all sizes are really feeling the pinch as they tend to have shorter order books than their bigger peers.

“Our partnership with MSC aims to help these companies by providing high-quality cutting tools at competitive prices and with short lead times. Smaller businesses are hurting, and they don’t have the size or scale to keep absorbing higher costs. With ZCC Cutting Tools products, manufacturers still get a technically excellent and versatile product but at a very attractive price point, helping them to reduce tool expenditure and save time.”

Rapid order fulfilment
ZCC Cutting Tools technical grade products are competitively priced as it is part of the Minmetal group which owns its entire supply chain, right down to mining the minerals used to make its tools. The company serves the UK market from its European logistics hub to ensure rapid order fulfilment and also has a team of European engineers to support its customers’ challenges.

ZCC Cutting Tools has trained MSC’s in-house engineers on its entire product range and MSC can also leverage the technical expertise of ZCC Cutting Tools’ engineering team to find solutions to any specific customer challenges.

James Howarth, head of category management at MSC, said: “ZCC Cutting Tools has the potential to really disrupt the market. The pricing is way below what you would expect for this quality of product and is achieved because of the unique supply chain capabilities of its parent company.

ZCC Cutting Tools also knows the value of working with a client to understand their needs and supporting them throughout the product’s lifetime, which very much aligns with our ethos at MSC.”

For further information or to place an order for ZCC Cutting Tools, visit the MSC website (www.mscdirect.co.uk).